Twenty-Three
‘Tiffany! Get in here!’
Jen was fed up with this ritual every time her sister came home and her mum roared out in anger. But tonight, instead of being the starting gun for a bundle, Tiffany did exactly as she was told. Jen noticed straight away that her sister’s usual swagger seemed to have drained away in the hours since she’d last seen her. Tiffany walked with hunched shoulders and her face was pale. The lack of colour in her cheeks showed the marks and bruises.
Babs did a double take when she saw them and her tone instantly softened. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
There was silence for a few moments as Jen’s sister hung like a puppet in the doorway. Her mum’s next question was touched with concern. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Of course I’m alright.’ There was a bit of the old bite in Tiffany’s answer.
‘Are you sure? You don’t look well. You been in a bit of Barney Rubble?’ Her daughter brawling was the only explanation her mum could think of. The real problem was who she’d been in a fight with.
But Babs got no answer. After hesitating for a while, Tiffany drifted away to her room like a ghost – a ghost with a limp. There was a whispered conversation between mother and oldest daughter as to what could be wrong. Whatever trouble she’d had in the past had only fuelled Tiffany’s fire, but now that fire had gone out. She seemed like a boxer who’d gone too many rounds. In the front room the two women traded ideas. Was she doing those E tabs that the government were always going on about? Had she fallen out with the bad crowd at the cemetery? Been in a ding-dong with a mate? Or even been knocked around by the cops? Jen decided to cut the conversation short and go and find out for herself.
She knocked on her sister’s door, got no reply so went in anyway. Tiffany sat on the carpet with her back resting against the built-in wardrobe. She’d rolled her trousers up and was massaging her reddened and swollen ankles. When she looked up and saw Jen looking down at her, she stopped, got up and flopped down on her bed. Jen sat down next to her. ‘Been in a ruck?’
Tiffany seemed grateful for the steer. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Some kids came down from Bow and tried to nick our pitch, so we had it out with them. We saw them off, of course.’
Jen knew this was a pack of pure manure, but there was something going on with her sister that made her forget the questions and instead sit on the bed. She took Tiffany’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. All the times she’d protected her sister when they were growing up came back to her, especially that time their mum had been drunk, cursing to high hell as she’d finally taken the plunge and started throwing their Dad’s clothes over the balcony years after he’d left.
Seven-year-old Jen hugged her little sister tight as they huddled together inside the built-in wardrobe in Tiffany’s bedroom. It was Saturday night and Mum was sobbing and swearing as she chucked items of clothes out of their home. Jen had been as snug as a bug in bed when the argy-bargy started. She’d got up and gone to Tiff’s bedroom knowing exactly where to find her. She could hear her sister’s quiet sobs and couldn’t see her anywhere, but she knew the wardrobe was Tiffany’s special hideout, her refuge from the world when it got too hard a place for a young girl to understand. Jen pulled the door back and found her sister huddled with her knees drawn up and her small face streaming with tears. It always broke Jen’s heart to see her little sister like this. She popped herself down by Tiffany, closed the door and pulled Tiff tight into her arms.
‘Where shall we go to today?’ Jen asked. This was their secret game, dreaming of being anywhere else but The Devil’s Estate.
‘Top of the Pops,’ Tiffany answered quietly. ‘Dancing with Boy George and Culture Club.’
They both loved Culture Club. They loved Boy George’s wacky clothes and hair. They’d never seen a geezer wear face paint before. Secretly Jen loved the group even harder after Uncle Fred, their Mum’s latest boyfriend, had said he didn’t want that poof music in the house. Jen didn’t get what a poof was, but it made Uncle Fred really peed off, which was good enough for her to keep liking it.
‘What if instead of Top of the Pops, we were making a video with them?’
Tiffany’s eyes grew round with amazement. ‘We can really do that?’
Jen smiled. ‘’Course we can. This is our little world; we can do whatever we want.’
The girls leaned the sides of their heads together and softly drowned out the noise of their parents as they sang ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’.
‘What’s up, sis?’ Jen drew away from the past where they had once been so close. ‘This isn’t like you. You enjoy a rumble; you enjoy being in trouble with the law. You haven’t been fighting with kids from Bow. So what is it? I might be able to help. Have you fallen out with someone?’
Tiffany sat up and began massaging her ankles again but it looked to Jen as if this was just a way of distracting her attention. ‘Is it this business with Stacey?’
‘What business with Stacey?’ Tiffany replied, so quickly that Jen almost jumped.
Ah, this is about her mate Stacey. ‘You worried that Mum will find out you’re still knocking about with her?’
Tiffany snapped, ‘No, it’s nothing to do with Stacey.’ Her tone turned fierce. ‘I tell you what it’s about – living on this dump of an estate and never thinking I’m going to get out here. I’m bored, Jen, bored.’ She twisted her face away from her sister. ‘Just leave me alone.’
Sighing, Jen eased up but, just before she left the room, she said, ‘I’m going places, Tiff, and you know why? Because I work hard. I don’t have time to get bored. I’m already moving in the right direction thanks to college. If you want to stop going the wrong way, I’ll help you sort something out when you leave school.’
Her sister remained stubbornly silent, so Jen left, closing the door quietly behind her.
‘What did she say?’ an anxious Babs asked. She was literally wringing her hands.
‘Nothing.’ No need to worry her mum; she’d just get frantic and start popping more Benzos like they were Smarties. ‘Must be time of the month.’ Jen headed for the front door.
‘Where you off to, love?’ her mum asked.
‘To see Bex.’ Then she closed the door.
But she wasn’t off to see her best mate. She decided to go and pay Stacey Ingram a visit.
‘John? Someone said you were looking for me?’
When Dee got back from the cemetery in Mile End, it didn’t take long for the bar staff to tell her that the boss was on the warpath, looking for her. She decided to go up to his office and front it out.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ He sat behind his desk with a full glass of whiskey, looking miffed. His lieutenant Chris sat in a chair to the side.
She came over all breathless and flirty. ‘I’ve been down in the cellar counting bottles. I think some of the bar staff have been half-inching your drink.’
Unseen by John, Chris shook his head and smiled hard at her, as if to say, Is that the best you can come up with? From the get-go, Dee realised pretty quickly that John’s right-hand man didn’t like her. Whether he’d figured out her game, or he was plain jealous because he wanted his boss all to himself, she couldn’t say. What she did know was that, if he stood in her way, he was going to be dealt with. He was probably used to John having girlfriends who were PAP (pass around pussy), who were here one day and gone the next, like that brain-dead bimbo Trish – no threat at all to his status. Well, Dee was going to show him that she had an intelligence rating that was way above her kitty-kat size.
‘I’ll be the first to admit,’ she carried on, looking Chris square in the eye, ‘that that’s Chris’s job really, but he never seems to have the time to do simple things, like check your stock, these days.’
Chris’s smile turned to stone on his face. That little jibe was one more mark against her. Good. You want a street fight, big man? Bring. It. On.
‘That true, Chris?’ John asked
, falling straight into her ring-covered hands.
Chris kept his gaze on Dee. ‘Don’t you remember, Dee, you said you’d do it for me as a favour? I had to pick up Nicky from school since his sitter couldn’t make it.’
Dee smiled. So that’s how he was going to play it in front of the boss; use his kid as leverage (it hadn’t taken Dee long to realise how much John doted on Chris’s boy), and make her out to be someone who forgot stuff – who didn’t know their arse from their elbow.
‘Oh, I thought that was last week,’ Dee responded sweetly. ‘I assumed this was a regular thing because you don’t want to get that nice suit of yours all dirty in the cellar.’ She turned to John. ‘But, boss, you want to be working with people who don’t mind getting their fingernails a little grimy every now and again.’ Dee flashed her acrylics near her cleavage. Oh yeah, she had John’s attention. ‘Well, if it’s all hunky dory boss I’d better get my hands even more dirty downstairs. On your behalf, of course – unlike some other people.’
And with that parting shot in Chris’s direction, she was gone. But not before she heard them chatting about her:
‘That’s one cocky bint,’ Chris said.
‘That’s how I like my staff – able to handle themselves.’
‘You want to keep an eye on her.’
John chuckled. ‘No need to worry about that, Chris, my son. I’ve got my eye on her alright.’
Dee almost laughed out loud when she heard John say the last with sauce in it. She’d better rack up the booty moves in his presence. Funny, at first it had slightly creeped her out knowing he was giving her bum the once-over, but now she quite liked his crinkly eyes burning into her. A flash of sexual heat ran through her. She returned to her security duties in the club. But her fearsome reputation already meant there was little for her to do as everyone was on their toes. No one wanted to cross Mizz Dee.
She waited patiently for a sign that John and Chris were leaving, as she was anxious to get back upstairs and listen to that day’s tapes. She got her break when an Arsenal player and his tanned-to-death girlfriend arrived at the club. As a fan, she knew John liked to make a fuss of footie stars, so she had one of the security boys ring upstairs and give him a steer. Within minutes, the boss, with Chris in tow, were down in the VIP lounge high-footballing the player, sharing their thoughts on the state of the league and plying him with champagne. While diabolical referees were bad-mouthed, Dee slipped out of the bar and went up to the storeroom to collect her tapes. But just as she got there she heard a disturbance downstairs. She couldn’t ignore it because she was head of bloody security. Whatever it was, she needed to deal with it quickly before John finished with the Arsenal player.
Once downstairs, Dee made her way to the main entrance where the noise was coming from. Then she heard a female voice coming in stereo from outside:
‘How are you going to feel if you don’t wake up tomorrow and haven’t made peace with God?’ The question was filled with fire and fury.
A large crowd was gathered at the main entrance to the club leading up to street level. Dee noticed that some of the crowd were laughing, as if this were the best entertainment they’d had on a Saturday night in ages.
‘Leave this place of wickedness and join us on our joyful journey to find true happiness,’ the voice continued.
‘A vodka and tonic, plus an E; that’s where you’ll find real happiness,’ someone in the crowd jeered, raising a snicker from some of the others.
‘What’s going on?’ Dee asked one of the door staff.
‘A bunch of Bible bashers on the hunt for sinners. That lot used to come around the Mermaid when I worked there. We’d chase them off; bad for business.’ He had a smirk on his face. ‘They’re some of your lot.’
Dee was not amused and pinned him with a filthy stare. ‘What do you mean, my lot?’
The bouncer became nervous, realising that he’d put his foot in it with the one person who held his job in her hand. The stern expression on her face dared him to look her in the eye. ‘I didn’t mean nothing by it, Mizz Dee . . .’
But Dee had already turned her back and was shouldering her way through the people, who were queuing up the outdoor stairs, to the pavement. She knew full well what he meant by ‘your lot’; whoever was causing the street drama was black. Childhood memories of all-day Saturdays spent at rousing services at the Pentecostal Church and Bible Studies came back to Dee, and she didn’t like it. She was done with waiting for God to give her the life she deserved – she’d left that way back in the past. If you wanted something, you better get ready to take it. She didn’t do religion, full stop. If people wanted to get down on their bended knees and find their future in the Good Book that was their business, but if they thought they were going to do it on her patch and make a mockery of John’s hard work, that was her business.
Once she was free of the crowd, she saw a trio of older black women standing on the other side of the road. They wore clothing that looked more suited to a 1970s revival session, and had hats perched on their heads. The ringleader seemed to be the statuesque woman in the middle, waving a Bible in the air, preaching loud and clear. ‘If you leave this house of sin today, The Lord will be merciful.’
‘Right ladies,’ Dee called out as she started across the street, ‘time to close this fire and brimstone showdown.’
‘Desiree?’ the tall woman with the Bible said in surprise. ‘Desiree Clark?’
Twenty-Four
Dee stumbled. Shit. No. Couldn’t be. But it was, because the woman continued, her voice loud enough for the Lord Himself to hear in heaven. ‘Desiree Clark. The handmaiden of Satan . . .’
Dee knew she had to do something. There was no way her meal ticket to paradise – John – could hear any of this. She quickly spun around, leaned over the stairs and yelled out to the bouncers, ‘Get these people in the club. I’m dealing with this situation.’
The crowd were hustled back in line as Dee stormed across the road. ‘What are you doing here, Auntie Cleo?’ Her voice was breathless, choked with disbelief.
The tall woman looked down at her. Her face was sad. ‘So this is what has happened to you. This is why you haven’t been back home in the last five years. You’ve fallen by the wayside, just like your mother.’
Cleo Clark was still a very handsome woman and the only true mother Dee had ever known. She had loved Dee, clothed her and taken her into the house of the Lord, from the day Dee’s mother had given baby Dee into her care. Although Dee had recently found her mother, she would always feel that this tough, tell-it-as-it-is woman was her real mother. She’d grown up calling her Auntie, but it wasn’t until she reached her teenage years that she realised that Cleo was no real relation to her at all. It was hard to find out the truth, because no one – not even Cleo – would tell Dee about her dad or mum. She’d stopped asking Cleo years ago who her dad was, because every time she did the other woman would simply say, ‘Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.’ And as for her real mum, her foster mother wouldn’t even go there.
Dee furtively looked around to make sure no one was still watching. She grabbed Auntie Cleo’s arm and propelled her around the corner. ‘Auntie you can’t be coming around here.’
The older woman studied her like she was a child again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me where you were? I’ve been worried about you.’
‘You always used to tell me to choose the right path and this is the life that I want—’
‘Looking like a filthy sinner straight from Sodom and Gomorrah,’ Auntie Cleo scoffed as she took in Dee’s clothes, cleavage and make-up.
Dee smirked. ‘From what I hear, Auntie Cleo, you would know all about that. I hear you were a right goer, back in your day.’
The other woman held her Bible high as if she was going to belt it across Dee’s face. But then she lowered it. Dee seethed with anger, but didn’t retaliate; this was one person she would never touch.
‘That’s why I’m telling you to get out of th
is life,’ the other woman begged. ‘It’s going to eat you up. Lay down with the Devil and you’ll burn for eternity. That’s what happened to your mother.’ Auntie Cleo stopped abruptly when she saw the expression on Dee’s face. ‘You’ve found her, haven’t you? You’ve seen her. She’s weak, Desiree, and she’ll make you weak too. It’s not too late to turn your back on her and walk away.’
Dee shook her head. ‘I can’t. She’s my mum.’
‘Then why did she abandon you, like a piece of rubbish left to find its own way in the street?’
That hurt. It really hurt. And the only way she could deal with that emotion was to leave the old Desiree behind and once again become the Dee everyone feared. She lifted the corner of her mouth into a snarl and stepped back. ‘Like I said, don’t be coming around here anymore.’
Auntie Cleo gave her a final look, then started to walk away. Just as she hit the corner for the main road, she turned back and said, in a gentle tone, ‘I’ll be praying for you.’
Then she was gone, and the snarl dropped from Dee’s lips. She slumped heavily against the wall, and felt choked up with tears. Turning her back on her old life was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. She’d hated all that Bible thumping and preaching, but because moving on also meant leaving the amazing Auntie Cleo behind. Her foster mother didn’t have a place in her new life. Scriptures and sin just didn’t tango together. But Dee and John did.
Dee swallowed back her tears as she turned her focus back on her plan. She needed to hear those phone tapes.
Auntie Cleo was long gone by the time she got back to the club. As soon as she saw the bouncer on the door, she pointed a finger in his chest and said, ‘You’re fired. Know why? Because my lot of people don’t include you.’
Jen never arrived at Stacey’s house. She saw the girl in the distance as she walked through the byways of the neighbouring block. It was a relief – she didn’t know what she would have done if she’d come face-to-face with that mad bird Mel Ingram. Just the thought of it made her shudder. Stacey walked in the shadows, head bowed, as if she’d committed a crime. Curious, Jen began to follow her as she weaved her way along the road. Every so often, Stacey would slow down, reach into her pockets and pull out items of clothing to put on. First it was a scarf, which she wrapped around her neck and the lower part of her face; then it was a baseball cap, which she drew over her forehead. Finally, she stopped to thread the hood of her jacket through its holes before pulling that over her head too. She gave a furtive look around and set off again. Now she looked more like an outlaw.
Blood Sister: A thrilling and gritty crime drama Page 15